


And Oceans Drowned

by YankingAwry



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: An AU w/o Mary, Angst, Canon Divergence, Drama, Drowning, FWP, First Kiss, First Time, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, Miscommunication, Post-Reichenbach, Romance, Sherlock's POV, Smut, in case that's a trigger idk, lots and lots of Feelings Without (even a little bit of) Plot, sort of post-post reichenbach, there is assuredly smut at the end of this tunnel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-22
Updated: 2015-11-22
Packaged: 2018-05-02 21:39:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5264573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YankingAwry/pseuds/YankingAwry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>When he closes his eyes he sees John, and it seems significant.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	And Oceans Drowned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merripestin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merripestin/gifts).



> pest, thank you for taking the time to exchange emails with a starstruck, bumbling idiot. Ever since finishing Safe Distance (the best and most unflinchingly honest fic in this fandom), I knew I wanted to be able to give you something (in bower bird fashion). Because pest is extraordinary, and pest writes true. If you haven't devoured all her stories, my heart goes out to you.  
> (did I just make a thing rhyme?)
> 
> Nims, thank you for keeping me right. 
> 
> also, it's my first time writing smut (!), so please be kind. And thank you, for being lovely and for reading.

 

 

Strange sounds flatten against Sherlock’s skull, distorting around curved bone. He is weightless, and everything around him is mercury. Dense, unyielding. He is the unwitting fly caught in amber, a fleck within the heavy gold. But this is not gold, this is the Thames, and its dark waters are pulling him under.

 _Move_.

He breaks the surface once, and gasps. The cold air knifes his face, fills his throat. He submerges, struggling to loosen the knots at his wrists and feet, coat buoying up and above him like the spread of useless wings. There are shards of refracted light, just above his reach. He kicks, wriggles, and learns that limbs are useless. Transport is unable to respond to central command. The end is nigh, and it is disappointingly common. _Stupid, so stupid_. His lungs have given good fight, but they were not built for this.

If Sherlock survives, he’ll either quit smoking, or smoke two packs a day. Living and dying are, after all, the same equation, they tend to the same limit, and having the process conducted on one’s own terms now seems a squandered extravagance.

[John would discover the stash, if Sherlock let him. John would yell at him, getting right in his face, if Sherlock let him. Close enough to smell the clean detergent and musk that is wholly his. _Then_ Sherlock would quit, quit _forever_ , because sometimes, not being allowed to die on your own terms is quite pleasant]

It is difficult to keep his eyes open, but closing them is tantamount to accepting defeat.

[He has always surrounded himself with a careless confidence reinforced by the witless NSY, by an uncaring elder brother, by graffiti scrawled in indecent colours, all doggedly believing the same thing. Ledges five feet apart wouldn’t scare him on the ground, so there’s no reason they should ten storeys high in the air, with the wind flaring his coat, making his scarf lopsided. He leaps because he is certain. He is certain because he leaps. With this tautology comes a small hope, suspended in the darkness of disbelief, too far beyond the realm of logic for him to ever acknowledge.

Perhaps, if he treats himself immortal, it means he is.]

His chest contracts to breaking point, and Sherlock inhales like the desperate, dying man he is, with everything he has. But this is not a film reel, this is not a smash-cut to black. Real death is slow.

When he closes his eyes he sees John, and it seems significant.

[John, who bursts into every recovery room like it’s the first time, and sits by his bed like it might be the last. John, who tugs his sleeves and shouts him down, and grabs his own coat when that doesn’t work. John, who will put himself into hot water for Sherlock as willingly as he would put tea bags.

John, who acts like Sherlock is the most mortal man he has ever met.]

A lined face, a wry little mouth. Eyes that are bluer in the light, the light that is well out of his reach. Sherlock can appreciate the neatness of evolution’s last trick, this overwhelming surge of undiluted survival instinct, _I’m so sorry, John-_

 

***

 

John cradles his head like it’s a fragile discovery, a crumbling artefact seeped in the sand of an excavation site.  “Oh. Oh, thank god.” His voice is thick, and trembling. Does John know how compromised he seems? Unlikely. If he knew Sherlock had the slightest hold on lucidity, he wouldn’t be so glaringly, excessively emotional. “You utter-” He stops. Takes a ragged breath. “That’s twice now. Twice, you bastard.” His words are harsh [and his hands so gentle].

Sherlock is tempted to drift off again, but John wouldn’t take very kindly to it. The paramedics hoist him onto the stretcher and carry him to the ambulance, a trail of marching ants. Blunt plastic digs into the bridge of his nose, and Sherlock feels elastic around his cheek. Breathing is abruptly, remarkably easier.

There is an insistent pressure around his numb fingers. John is holding his hand in both of his, squeezing Sherlock’s knuckles together. He can taste sour bile on the roof of his mouth. Then John leaves his hand, and Sherlock’s fingers feel lost.

He hears the medic say John cannot accompany Sherlock on the ambulance.

He hears the medic say that standard procedure that must be followed.

He hears the medic say there just isn’t enough space.

A few moments later, John calmly slides into the seat by the stretcher. The medic clambers in after him, and closes the back door defeatedly.

[John’s moods of reasoning with unreasonable authorities tend to swing, from listing erstwhile army credentials in quick, chopping succession, or simply letting his eyes do a gun’s job. The last is spectacular, and makes Sherlock want to do something in the vein of cheering/whooping/clicking his heels together]

The external pressure returns to his hand. Maroon, fraying cardigan, hanging from the shoulders unbuttoned. John was wearing a striped jumper in his death vision [shock/revelation/epiphany? All and none of these]. Reconciling both these Johns feels like a process in stereoscoping. He wills his lips to shape words, and laboriously, a rasp works its way out his throat. Practically inaudible. But the almost-warmth around his hand tightens, and John’s eyes are alarmingly bluer in the fluorescent light of the ambulance.  

 

***

 

“-it’s not like I enjoy the occasional hypothermia, so if I’d foreseen getting drugged and drowned to death, I imagine I’d have brought help, but I _didn’t_ -”

“Now hang on, wait- you didn’t call me because I had a _date_?” John’s eyebrows rise, frown lines rapidly piling on top of each other and disappearing into his hairline. A quick intake of breath, and then he brings a crooked index finger to his mouth, restraining himself. Exhales, slowly. “Since _when_ ,” John grits out, “has Sherlock Holmes _cared_ -”  

Methodically, Sherlock works backwards: _since when?_  Since long before. Before the two years of unending Siberian snow, crusting everything in lonely sameness. Before preferring to call, unfamiliar tears collecting beneath his chin, and cooling on his face. Before sharing toothpaste and an off-brand shampoo at an inn he did not want to leave. Before standing surrounded by chlorinated water, but with nothing to put out his burning heart.

Sometime, around noticing a stoic marvel standing behind the fluttering yellow crime-scene tape, apart from the flashing lights and police. Upright chin, hands clasped behind the back. Traces of a steady aim, complex morality, and astounding loyalty, all beneath plain, squared fingernails. As unmissable as the gunpowder would have been.

 “-about _any_ of that?”

Sherlock twists his face away, cheek scratching against the pillow case. The hot water bottle burns through the starched, hospital-issue gown, warming his entire side.

It’s a rhetorical question, and while John doesn’t expect an answer, it won’t stop him from being angered at Sherlock’s non-responsiveness. John’s aggressiveness can be like flame to phosphorus, and doubly visible.

 _Oh_. Sherlock sucks in a breath.

“You resent me for those two years- _still_ \- despite all claims to the contrary.” he realises out loud.

“I- what?”

“ _’That’s twice now. Twice, you bastard.’_ ” Sherlock repeats, slowly, turning his head to face John again.

“How do you r-” John stops, looking caught. Child’s play for Sherlock to guess the next word, really. _How do you remember?_   Further confirmation that John believed he spoke those words in safety, to an oxygen-deprived mind that wouldn’t recall them either way. _I do this for a living, John_.

“That’s not what- we’re not even talking about that right now-”

_Except we are. Except every conversation we have reduces to this._

And he could almost laugh, because _of course_ the deduction of being in love with John Watson would be met in vindictive balance by the universe with another, obvious one: John Watson hasn’t forgiven Sherlock Holmes for faking his death.

He feels a sudden, ballooning anger. Rashly, he bites out, “Here’s your answer, John. I didn’t interrupt your date because ever since my return, I’m supposed to somehow _intuit_ when you need ‘space’ and when to feed you constant reassurance. I find your mood swings unwarranted, and frankly, coping with the arbitrariness is _exhausting_ me. I am _sick_ of it,” John’s jaw is slack, and he looks stricken, “and it would serve the both of us far better if you just said what _exactly_ it is you want from me.” He finishes the sentence louder than he had intended, throat strained.

There is a ringing silence.

When Sherlock came back from the dead, he let John pin his arms and punch his nose and cheekbones, because even if John had stopped caring [but he hadn’t, _he hadn’t_ , the warm blood congealing on his upper lip was a bizarre triumph], he could feel the impact of knuckle against his skin, enraged and _vital_ , and this alone was worth all of it.

But the equilibrium had shifted, and when John moved back in, he made Sherlock suffer more and more of the smaller indignities. The ones that bubbled, remaining unsettled, panging sharp. Stalking off for a ‘walk’ and ‘fresh air’, clicking the laptop shut and stomping up to his room, staying the night at Stamford’s [Stamford!] whenever arguments came circling, closer and closer, around that gaping drain of two static years that Sherlock, no matter how hard he tried, could not fill with enough justification or appropriate groveling. As if _saving_ John’s _life_ wasn’t good enough to compensate for leaving him by himself.

[Sherlock had been by himself too. Knowing John was alive should’ve been a comfort, not torment]

As ever, John’s left fist betrays him, the muscles on his hands working furiously. It takes him two tries to get the words out. “You are not _allowed_ ,” low, fierce, “to make this about me. Stop deflecting, you’re being _childish_ , none of this makes up for the fact you could’ve _died_ -”

“-dear _god_ it was an oversight, how many times, precisely, will I have to apologise? I don’t deliberately put myself in harm’s way to _provoke_ a reaction from you-”

“-oh, don’t you?” John’s voice is hoarse. “That’s funny, ‘cause it’s starting to feel like exactly that.” His breathing is heavy. “Sod this.” He yanks his [maroon] cardigan off the collapsible chair at the bedside, grabbing the rolled-up copy of the morning’s Guardian, clearly about to leave.  

“Really John, if you have such low tolerance for confrontation, best not to take the taxi home unless you have exact change.” Sherlock itches to say more, to make him halt in his tracks by letting out something shocking, or maudlin. 

_Fine, run away, like the coward you are!_

_Are you so deluded to imagine you can avoid this forever?_

_Don’t leave. Please, stay._  

But John turns back sharply before leaving, the movement seizing something swiftly in Sherlock’s stomach. For an instant John’s face is unguardedly upset: the corners of his lips pulled down and parted, eyebrows drawn in together.

[How to say, that interrupting dates used to be as much about the case as the constant, continuous affirmation? The frighteningly deep loyalty John let him glimpse at, whenever he dropped everything to come away with Sherlock?

How to say, that since coming back, he has never mustered enough courage to learn if the loyalty remains unchanged?]

John glances at Sherlock, gives a soft exhale— and then walks out anyway. The door shuts behind him soundlessly.

 

***

 

Sherlock is sitting on the floor with his knees hunched and back against his armchair when John steps into the sitting room. It’s almost evening, and the streetlights should be blinking to life any time now. He shrugs off his jacket, reaches for the switch, flips it—and staggers back when he finds Sherlock staring right at him. 

“Christ.”

John squints, blinking at him twice, and then makes his way to the kitchen. He turns the tap on, and the sound of water hitting steel basin is muted as John passes a glass underneath. His clothes are damp from the drizzle outside, which makes it difficult to estimate how long he’s been drinking. The trace of alcohol is unmistakable, acrid and unwanted, interfering with John’s usual, lovely smell. 

John walks back to the partition, and comes up carefully behind his own chair, hovering. He drags a sleeve across his mouth. The stance seems deliberate, as if the solidity of the armchair is an acting fort. Cushioned protection from Sherlock. He digs the heel of a palm into his eye, muttering, “S’only been a day.”

“I was the model patient. Core temperature and body functioning as per the normal, recovery trajectory.”  

“So they discharged you?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

John frowns, and then his lips purse the way they do when he doesn’t want to grin. He pivots with his one hand on the armrest, dropping heavily onto the seat. His feet graze the carpet, bracketed by Sherlock’s legs. He shifts one of them, and Sherlock watches, as if detached from his body, the foot fitting snugly under his calf.

“As long as you didn’t- y’know - tie bedsheets together and...scale down a wall-”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” John is trying so hard not to smile, and it is replicating the same, stupid urge in Sherlock. “As if I’d need bedsheets.”

John gives a bark of laughter. He then puts his hands on the armrests and heaves himself, and Sherlock throat tightens in strange panic, because John can’t leave _now_ , not when they could pretend to resolve their issues and suppress the morning’s events in typical, painless fashion [relatively speaking. Sherlock is restless with the knowledge of being in love, complete with an aching, phantom feeling nestling in some aorta or another]. Not when the arch of John’s foot is perfect against his pyjamas, its presence a hot water bottle of the best kind. But John only lowers himself to the ground, twisting himself into a cross-legged position, and shifting until he is very, very close to Sherlock.

Sherlock can see the pores of his skin, the swimming film of moisture coating his eyes. Four blond lashes stick together, forming a clump. The faint smell of beer on his breath that should, by all rights, disgust him— but it makes no difference. This proximity to John is wondrous.

Resolution, healthy communication, closure: largely meaningless words conjured to add structure to the flow of human interaction; moderate it as a staged play, breaking it into various acts. The words can hang. John isn’t a word or a concept, John is real, and Sherlock decides he will take _all_ the small indignities, the yelling and the hypocrisy, gather them _gladly_ with widespread arms, if he can come home every night to this man. The moment he makes this decision, he feels as though he has taken a magnifying glass away, seeing the stained cells on the slide for how small they really are.  

“John,” he begins, tentatively, “I apologise for-”

And then John’s thumb is on the side of his face, raking down haltingly. Smudging a trail of DNA across his cheek. “Don’t,” he says. “I should-” Stops. “I’m the one who’s. Erm. So…so sorry.” The thumb stops at his lower lip, and rests there, heavy as wired explosives wrapped in a parka.

“John. You’re drunk.”

“I _was_ drunk,” John corrects him. “Pissed as anything, actually, ‘bout four hours ago. Now I’m sober. Ish. And I think you’re in love with me.”

Sherlock examines himself, and finds he is either in a state of extreme calm, or agitated to the point that his mind is falsifying all sensory input. He asks, “Why so?”

“Look at you,” John says, very simply, as if it’s explanation enough. Like Sherlock is giving away something tremendous, just by sitting in front of him, with his palms on the polyester carpet, and John’s thumb burning a hole through his skin.

It’s fairly plausible.

“You scare me, you’re not- and I don’t _resent_ you. You’re so…” John’s thumb digs into his lip for an instant, and the feeling travels right down to the base of Sherlock’s stomach. “So _good_. And- noble. A better person than me. And I feel like,” John swallows, hard, “I _want_ to resent you- and try being difficult- to see if I’m able, or just too…dependent.”

Very slowly, Sherlock reaches to hold the wrist of John’s raised hand. “I don’t see why that should mean I’m in love with you.”

“Hah, okay, you’ll like this one. I think it was- not interrupting my date.” John leans closer still, until the world has condensed to the space where their foreheads touch.

“I kissed you,” John then says, which is confusing, seeing as John quite patently _hasn’t_ kissed Sherlock, John is _going_ to kiss Sherlock [that much is obvious: he’s licked his lips twice and tilted his head slightly, eyes roaming Sherlock’s face in that assessing manner of his], and he wonders if this is how it’ll always be, both of them getting tenses wrong before significant things occur. “After I gave you mouth-to-mouth, I mean. I didn’t know if you would remember. I thought it hadn’t worked, and that- so I kissed you then. I kissed you, and _Christ_ , you were so _cold_ -”

Sherlock stops John from saying more, and they stay like that, lips moulded together, until John exhales shakily into Sherlock’s mouth.

He tastes like a saviour, of stale sourness and rain.

He tastes lovely. Of course he would.

Sherlock tightens his grip on John’s wrist, and parts his lips wider. Their tongues meet, clumsy and a little rough. The moist, foreign intimacy is a shock/epiphany/revelation, all at once. Sherlock makes an unintelligible noise, and John shakes off the hand on his wrist in favour of expertly holding Sherlock’s head in both his hands, as if it’s something he’s done it before [he has]. Sherlock can feel the calluses on his jaw, stroking. John pulls away to look at him. His eyes are wide and dark, darker than Thames waters, and his lips are pink from being kissed.

Sherlock lets out a hitching breath under the scrutiny.

The sound must do something to John, because he abruptly gets on his knees and adjusts himself, straddling Sherlock’s thighs, and begins to mouth gently at Sherlock’s throat. “Oh,” Sherlock says, full of surprise and realisation, like a deduction falling in place. “ _Oh_.” His hands clutch at the carpet uselessly, and then, by degrees, he brings them to John’s hips. He tugs at John’s shirt sides, pulling him so that they’re flush against each other, John’s chest on Sherlock’s, rising and falling with short, shallow breaths. John’s teeth, now nicking at his pulse point, tongue laving it over— their erections brush against each other and it’s almost too much to _bear_ —

“John, stop-”

“-right, sorry, _Jesus_ -”

“What are you _apologising_ for-”

John sits up, nearly falling backwards, and Sherlock hastily catches him by the hands. They’re panting, and it’s ridiculously erotic.

“Sherlock, do you- would you like to-”

“Yes,” Sherlock answers, firmly. _Yes, to everything._

“Because if you don’t, that’s fine, I’m sorry for- we can just-”

“ _John._ ”

“Right then.” John tries to say in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he’s going to spring up and start scouting for location, or draw a plan of action, but his gaze keeps flicking between Sherlock’s eyes and lips in a way that is immensely gratifying. Sherlock pulls himself to his feet, then John, and without letting go of his hand, leads the way to his bedroom. 

“Have you-” John swallows. “Have you ever done this. Before.”

Sherlock thinks John sees the answer on his face. He tries for levity. “If I had slept with you previously, I believe I would remember.” John lets out a nervous laugh, and Sherlock adds, “It would be impossible to delete.”

John face goes funny at that. He closes the door, and then leans against it, drawing Sherlock to him. “Are you sure you want to?” he asks quietly, the utter moron. Sherlock holds John’s hip, and carefully grinds his erection against John’s in answer. John’s eyes slit shut, as if in pain. When he opens them again, they’re the most desperate blue Sherlock has ever seen. “I don’t mean just this.”

[How to say, that Sherlock has only ever started anything that he intends to finish?

How to say, that for the first time, he wants to begin something that never, ever ends?]

Sherlock is without the right words, he told them to hang and now they’re rightfully deserting him, spilling out of his grasp as inarticulate particulates. So he gives up and kisses John on the forehead forcefully, once, then twice. 

“Okay,” John says, as if Sherlock said something aloud. “Alright.”

They undress, an unexplained knot in Sherlock’s throat the whole time. On climbing into bed, they settle so that they’re on their sides, facing each other. Domino pieces.

A shadow slants across John’s face. He whispers [because apparently sex induces some sort of reverence] “Your room is really…normal-looking. And clean. It’s weird.”

“Hmm, I don’t use it very often,” Sherlock replies. John edges closer, puts a hand on his hip bone. “You could give me a reason to.” John smiles wide at that, and then, astonishingly, pulls Sherlock on top of him.

“I could.”

They kiss deeply, almost languidly. John puts his hands on the back of Sherlock’s thighs, and they wander upward, groping Sherlock’s buttocks, long and hard. Sherlock groans openly into John’s mouth, fingers of one hand curled tight into a fist at John’s right collarbone, the other splayed across an aged, puckered wound, the miracle that delivered John to him.

They grind, and Sherlock stills when they get the angle just right, when the heads of their penises move perfectly against each other, to look into John’s face—and finds John looking back at him, a soft incredulity on his features that makes Sherlock swallow in a hatefully vulnerable way. John follows the bob of his Adam’s apple with his lips, and turns them over. Sherlock feels the residual warmth of John on the bedcovers against his back, and has no time to luxuriate in this fact before John takes a nipple in his mouth, and both their penises in one hand, squeezing them together.

“Nn _gh_ \- John, oh, _John_ -”

John sucks down on his nipple, then another, and Sherlock’s hands grasp at the sheets. He’s loud, and trembling. John’s breath, damp on his chest, John’s belly expanding with every inhale against Sherlock’s, his hand now only jerking Sherlock off, moving faster and faster, pulling rougher and rougher. John’s penis slaps against Sherlock’s pelvis, and Sherlock hisses when John’s thumb swipes across his glans, circling it. Everything is heat and delirium, like a fever breaking, and a feeling in his abdomen tightens and builds in crescendo, a many-stringed, high-strung symphony, and Sherlock hurtles through his orgasm with curious awareness, John’s name stuck in his throat.

[He understands why sex induces reverence, he does]

John presses a clumsy kiss to the corner of his lips, then his cheek, and rolls off. He takes his penis in his hand, fist moving in a blur, and Sherlock clambers on top of him. He plunders that wry little mouth with his tongue, dipping in and out, swallowing all of John’s moans for safe-keeping, pinching and rolling John’s nipples between his thumb and index finger. When John tries looking away, Sherlock grips his chin, looking right into the blue.

_Stay exactly where you are._

John's mouth falls open, and his breaths come out in short bursts. He looks at Sherlock with a liquefying awe, like Sherlock is a _deity_ of some kind, except with John arching up and into him, Sherlock has never felt more mortal.

_Keep your eyes fixed on me._

John comes with a grunt, in a series of shudders, and Sherlock holds him through it, hands sliding up and down John’s forearms, leaving dry kisses on his jaw and neck, each kiss a word he can’t bring himself to declare, _amazing_ , _fantastic_ , _you’re_ _brilliant_. They slump onto the mattress, and after a beat Sherlock debates what to say, because ostensibly something customary needs to be voiced, or _whispered_ at the very least— when John pets his head in a very condescending, irritating way.

He lets out something garbled.  

“What’s that?” John asks, slinging a hand over Sherlock’s hip.

“I said,” Sherlock starts, and then blinks, because the sudden tenderness on John’s face is on the blinding side of bright. “I said.” He clears his throat, and drops his voice to a whisper, for there is no other way. “I’m glad I wasn’t unconscious for that.”

John snorts, and pulls him closer.

They fall asleep this way. Sherlock’s hand cupping John’s neck, and John’s hand on his chest, conducting the slow rhythm of his heart.

 

 


End file.
